I had a checkin baggage weight-13.6kg, a laptop bag and duffle bag together weighing 11.9kg for the cabin. I was asked to pay Rs.1250 for excess baggage. I made an appeal for waiver with Mr Aditya, flight manager at Ahmadabad on following grounds:
I am a frequent flier with additional baggage allowance in two other major airlines (would have been with Indigo as well, if you had such a program!)
Cabin baggage is routinely not weighed.
Laptop+ allowed hand luggage of 7kg would normally be around 10kg and therefore asking me to pay for 5 kg is unreasonable.
Normally most airlines would not be very rigid on minor excesses, especially for the first time (you may check my previous Indigo flight records to verify my claim)
However, Mr Aditya appeared authoritative and was not gracious enough to grant my request. Hence I decided to dispose of one of the hand luggage bags and and finally did so too.
Now I got very offended for some of the things which happened during this process:
1.Mr. Aditya did not make a pleasant conversation at all. After I told him that I have decided to fore-go part of my luggage, he made an unprovoked statement "Go and dispose your bag in the dust bin; otherwise I will not issue your boarding pass." That was totally uncalled for given that I never said in words or gesture that I would not do so. To me it simply demonstrated his ego and arrogance and is unacceptable even by modest customer care standards. Yet I complied with his "instruction" without argument, because I realized by then that there is no point in talking to an unprofessional person.
2.I later found that the aircraft occupancy was low with so many vacant seats. So being rigid about this small issue was not really warranted.
3.While Indigo may be proud of its staff trying to levy every possible extra charge on its passengers, I found the idea of treating passengers like "money bags to be milked off the last drop" an unfair practice and revolting concept.
HENCE, ON MY PART, I HAVE DECIDED TO AVOID INDIGO FLIGHTS HENCEFORTH, BOTH FOR MY OFFICIAL AS WELL AS PERSONAL TRAVEL, however small and insignificant it may be to them.